Lab-grown meat: a rosy future?

Those who follow the social media can very often read triumphalist headlines about a new technology that, we are told, is going to revolutionize our agriculture, our environment and our table: in vitro meat.

In most of these articles (here, here and here) this product is represented as futuristic, like a miraculous food that is going to end animal suffering, as well as improve the environment, and will be safer and cheaper than the meat as we know it today. According to these pieces of news, in a few years, artificial meat will fill the shelves of our supermarkets. Moreover, we are told, as irrefutable proof of this new future in which this product will be available in all butcher shops and will be present in all recipes, the fact that some of the most prestigious entrepreneurs in the world have made investments in this technology.

Figure 1: Culture of cells in a laboratory

Now, what are the real facts beyond the press hype? Does laboratory meat really have so many advantages? Is it going to remove our meat, as well as milk, fish, and eggs, as we know them today from our tables and restaurants?

Let’s analyze in detail what the companies that are trying to develop this product promise and let’s observe, through the available scientific data, if the benefits are really so important and also whether it is true that this technology is as close to our kitchens as promised.

However, I want to start with a disclaimer: the information available is limited. The companies that work with this technology have the information – logically – very close to their chests. So this article is based on the public data made available so far.

Is it possible?

Growing cells in a laboratory is no mystery to experts. Lots of researchers use this technique to prove the effect of drugs, study the toxic impact of multiple substances as well as to better understand how genes and cellular metabolism occur.

In 2002, NASA cultured in vitro golden carp cells as a potential food source for astronauts. A year later the Dutch “bio-artist” Oron Catts managed to grow frog cells and served them at a banquet in France (the donor frog attended the banquet as a guest). However, it would not be until 2013 when the famous lab grown hamburger developed by the University of Maastricht in Holland made its formal presentation at a massive press conference in London. That hamburger had a processing cost of 250.000€.

Figure 2: The first in-vitro hamburger fried

Since then, other companies have presented samples of products with similar characteristics: meatballs and chicken nuggets are some of the best-known examples.

The production costs of these products has come down sharply. These companies give disparate data: from $350/lb to $37/lb. Although still far from the price of a kilogram of minced beef (the most expensive one in the market) which can be purchased for 3-4$/lb. We also have to consider that the price of livestock products continues to decline as genetics and the animal’s feed productivity keeps improving.

Figure 3: Animal’s food continues to lower its prices (adjusted due to inflation)

Will these companies become competitive? Some announce that they will place their products on the shelves in a few months, conversely, Mark Post, the scientist who developed the hamburger presented in London in 2013, predicts that scientists are 2-3 decades away from this technology to become a reality.

Figure 4: Mark Post, scientist who developed the first in vitro hamburger

There are reasonable doubts about the feasibility of the process to produce in vitro meat in industrial quantities as it is very complex and presents numerous uncertainties. Let’s take a look:

Cultivating cells requires providing them with nutrients: vitamins, amino acids, as well as growth factors and hormones like insulin, growth hormone, thyroid factors. All these molecules are obtained from fetal bovine serum (FBS). This serum, as its name suggests, is extracted from an unborn bovine fetus which contains all the factors previously mentioned, which will allow cells to grow in vitro. Although some cell lines can grow without bovine serum, nowadays it is an essential component for most cell cultures.

Figure 5: Fetal bovine serum sample

FBS remains a fundamental ingredient for all companies that produce artificial meat, as stated by entrepreneurs and technicians who work with this technology. In fact, as recognized by managers and scientists who research this field, this is a key limiting factor. If they cannot grow artificial meat without FBS it is very unlikely that their efforts will be completed with a commercial product, due to the cost (serum is sold at around $ 1,200 /L) and because the “meat” produced would not be free from animal slaughter.

On top of the nutrients, it is necessary to keep the cells at an adequate temperature and to prevent the cultures from being contaminated with bacteria, viruses or fungi. To achieve this, antibiotics or other antiseptics should added to keep cells uncontaminated. How would we then eliminate these compounds? An animal does this through its liver and kidneys, so that when it reaches the market, the meat has no residues. But a cell culture has no such mechanism.

Other technical considerations can add difficulties to this initiative: in order to grow, the cells need to have somewhere to lean on, they do not grow by freely floating in the nutrient medium. To do this, they must be supplied with a matrix. The scaffolding on which the cells will grow ought to be composed of a material that will allow them to organize themselves. The ideal component, until now, seems to be bovine collagen, which would be an animal added element when what these start-ups want is to produce meat without the help of animals. An animal source scaffolding would be a contradiction in itself, as it happened with the addition of FBS. Besides, once the cells are “harvested”, that matrix would be part of the final product, which would potentially modify the flavor, tenderness, etc. of the final product.

Figure 6: Observe the reticular structure used as an scaffolding for cells to grow on it (phosphorecent points)

Another factor that involves a technical difficulty is genetic stability. Keep in mind that 1 Kg of meat equals to 8 x 1012 cells. The many divisions may originate carcinogenic cells. Although these cells do not have to be harmful, as they would be digested as all the others, experts say that it would be necessary to conduct trials in order to have certainty that they do not pose any health risks.

Moreover, muscle fibers, when growing under ambient oxygen conditions, do not express the red color of myoglobin, but, on the contrary, express a yellowish hue. This does not alter its nutritional properties, but it will certainly affect their aspect, unless artificial pigments are used.

Finally, the flavor of the meat is the result of the mixture of different cell types: muscular, nervous, but, above all, fat. Fat cells, in correct proportions, give the meat its unique flavor. Growing different cell lines to provide this variety of tissues is another challenge for this industry. On the other hand, the composition of meat has numerous micro nutrients such as vitamin B12 and certain minerals such as iron that have to be added, in very measured proportions, to obtain a product with the nutritional properties, as we know it.

Today, these challenges remain unsolved. In fact, the few experimental tests made public show that this type of meat will have to agglomerate in the form of hamburgers or nuggets, precisely the cheapest products on the market where it is more difficult to compete for price.

Is it meat?

Is artificial meat really identical to the meat we eat today? This is not a trivial question because a legal battle is lurking on whether or not laboratory meat should be called as such. We have already had this experience in Europe where the EU court ruled that only milk from animals can be defined as such and that products made of soybeans and other ingredients cannot use this denomination.

Beyond what the courts should determine in the future; the meat that comes from an animal that has been raised and slaughtered for that purpose is not only made up of muscle. It also contains fat cells, nerves, blood vessels, collagen and, sometimes, tendons. In addition, once the animal is sacrificed, the muscle loses its oxygen supply and undergoes a metabolic process by which glycogen is transformed into lactic acid, which leads to a significant reduction in muscle pH, which activates a series of chain reactions that will confer meat with its final properties of tenderness and flavor.

Lab-grown meat will lack most of these components and will only contain muscle fibers (myocytes) and possibly fat cells (adipocytes). We must not forget that muscles have a function: to generate movement and thanks to this, the tissue develops its own hardness, consistency and flavor. All this would be absent in artificial meat – although some companies claim that they can mimic this effect by electrically stimulating cultured cells.

It is possible that a large number of vitamins and micro-minerals will be left out of the composition of the artificial meat, as we have already indicated.

Therefore, although in vitro meat is composed mainly of muscle fibers, just like natural meat, there are many doubts about whether the final product of the cell culture will have the similar physical-chemical, nutritional and organoleptic properties. In fact, companies that invest this way of production are aiming at products such as sausages, meatballs or hamburgers all of them based on minced meat, which is easy to mix with additives, dyes and flavorings.

Is there an advantage?

According to those who see lab-grown meat as the new paradigm in food industry, what is wrong with conventional meat? They fundamentally allege three disadvantages that artificial meat could improve:

A high environmental impact of meat production as we know it (greenhouse gases, water consumption, and desertification, among others)

Animal suffering (these companies argue that the animals on farms have miserable, secluded lives that are not worth living)

Risk of food-borne diseases (livestock carry microorganisms on their skin and intestines that can affect people in certain circumstances) and the risk of epidemics originating from animals (since some diseases can be transmitted from animals to humans).

Let’s take a look at what the data says over these objections which are raised about natural meat.

The environment:

It is alleged, as an axiom, that lab-grown meat will have a much smaller impact on the environment than traditional meat. According to FAO data, global livestock production emits 14.5% of total greenhouse gases, it uses high energy resources, and a lot of surface area and water. Can we be sure that all of these inputs will drastically go down if real animal meat is substituted with artificial meat?

The available studies in this field – which are just a few – show these results:

They all agree that laboratory meat will require the use of great amounts of energy, greater than the production of chickens. When compared with pork production, in vitro meat it is at a tiny advantage or at a disadvantage, depending on which study is considered.

Regarding carbon footprint, in-vitro meat doesn’t have any advantage over the production of chicken or pork, and one study suggests artificial meat carbon foot print is greater than that of cattle production.

A German study that compares chicken production and all alternatives to meat production identifies laboratory meat as the alternative with the greatest impact on all environmental parameters.

Figure 9: The environmental impact of the alternatives to chicken meat. In vitro meat has the greatest impact on all aspects. Source: adapted from Smetana et al.

We have to keep in mind that maintaining a reactor where muscle cells multiply requires a lot of energy: the culture should be at 37-38ºC. Besides, nutrients (amino acids, vitamins, oxygen, etc.) should be added regularly, and waste materials such as urea that the cells synthesize as part of their metabolism must be removed (the calculations were made on a hypothetical reactor of 15000 L). The results are clear.

If this all was not enough, the studies omit three important points (partially recognized by the authors):

Animals produce many things other than meat, they have multiple industrial uses. Churchill said that it was absurd to produce a full chicken when only the thighs and breasts were used. The great English politician was not very knowledgeable about livestock because the truth is that no animal part is wasted at all. Everything that we do not incorporate into the food chain finds multiple uses in the industry. Collagen is removed from the bones and be used to produce printing paper or film for x-rays; the skin extracts are used to manufacture adhesives; fertilizers are made from hairs and engine anti-freezer or wax polisher is produced with fat. Therefore, if artificial meat displaced traditional livestock production, all these products would have to be manufactured from other raw materials and that would also mean emission of gases, use of energy, water and land surface.

Another factor that these studies do not come to value is what we would do if all the plant by-products that are fed to animals had to be destroyed. According to FAO studies, 86% of all the feed consumed by animals is made from vegetable waste that is not edible by humans: fruit peels, cereal debris, cottonseed, soybean cake and many others. Six thousand million tons that without the animals would contaminate our planet.

Finally, shrub cleaning, especially by ruminants, is a key factor to avoid forest fires. Very recently, California has been devastated by fires. There are some studies that point out that the absence of livestock is a determining factor in the loss of forest mass in this, and other regions, due to fire due to the role livestock has in foliage and shrub cleaning

It could certainly be pointed out that when lab-grown meat technique is well underway it would be possible to reduce its negative effects. This is probably correct, but we must consider that this is also true for livestock, since its negative impact is greater in developing countries, where production is less technified.

Figure 10: The emission of greenhouse gases in cattle is decreasing where this production is more technified.

Animal suffering:

We enter a field that goes beyond science because, although there are numerous studies on animal welfare, some consider that any animal, for the fact of being in a farm, must endure unacceptable living conditions.

However, in a farm, animals have food, they are safe from bad weather, they receive medical attention, have a controlled temperature and they are safe from predators. There is no question that it is necessary to continue with the efforts that guarantee and improve animal welfare, but it is unfair to conclude that the domestic animals of production suffer without exception, , as anyone who has had occasion to visit a few farms, understands immediately.

If one day, artificial meat completely replaces the natural one, it would mean the disappearance of billions of animals. Certainly, many of them, especially in the third world, live in manifestly improvable conditions, but many others have a good quality of life that they simply could not enjoy if their existence ceased to make sense.

The link with animals in agriculture would be lost. It would undoubtedly mean a profound social change for many communities. Undoubtedly, humankind has overcome other changes of similar depth, and would possibly overcome this too, but we cannot ignore that the transition would not be easy.

Disease transmission:

It is certain that food of animal origin, if it does not come from controlled animals is risky from a health standpoint. But, we must not forget, that many food borne diseases do not have their origin in livestock but in the handling that is made during its preparation. The artificial meat would not be free of a contamination risk as it would also be handled. On the other hand, as it has been explained, lab-grown meat would be produced in fermenting tanks that can be contaminated with bacteria, viruses or fungi that could be a source of infections for consumers. Do not forget that the finding of penicillin was due to some fungi that contaminated a bacterial culture that Dr. Fleming was studying.

Taking all the above into consideration, and with the data available so far, the technical and regulatory difficulties seem to be very hard to overcome. We have also seen that the environmental impact of this technology would not be positive, but quite the opposite. All this without considering the low acceptance that, according to numerous surveys, arouses this technology among consumers.

We will see what the future holds, maybe this technology will triumph and turn livestock into a museum relic, just as digital photography did with old films or maybe it will not. At the end of the day, many technologies have not been able to take roots, either due to cost, technical difficulties or because the public does not adapt, just like it happened with cloning or solar energy.

All of the above arises certain doubts about in vitro meat, both on its materialization and on its environmental advantages. Those who promote it call it ethical meat or clean meat, but the data questions this self-denomination.

Finally, some of the leading companies in livestock production have invested on in vitro meat start-ups. But, it is interesting that these same companies continue to heavily invest in expanding their traditional livestock business.

First, the use of FBS is a non-starter. It is too expensive, too variable lot-to-lot, and there is not enough FBS in the world to supply the cell therapy industry, let alone the larger volumes needed to make cell-based meat at scale. A host of serum-free medium formulations already exist for the growth of a variety of stem cells and will continue to be optimized for clean meat production. The essential growth factors necessary can be replaced with recombinant technology, although work has to be done to make this more affordable. Virtually every company in this space has stated they will not sell products using FBS, and many have already switched to serum-free formulations. It is true that cost-effective, optimal formulations for a broad set of species and cell types will take some time to develop. I cover this in Series IV of my cell-based meat series.

Second, there will be no antibiotics used at scale. Academic cell culture labs often use antibiotics or antimycotics because the cells exist in an incubator that is opened throughout the day, with cells moving back and forth in the open air. An industrialized bioprocess is largely sealed from the outside world and methods were created to keep these bioprocesses sterile (irradiation, electroporation, steam, filtration). The tools and strategies used to keep the production of biologics such as vaccines and antibodies sterile will be applied to cell-based meat production at scale. This is a huge benefit for cell-based meat production — it should not contribute to antibiotic use and subsequent antibiotic resistance and should decrease foodborne illness events. I discuss this in Series II, IV, and VI.

Third, scaffolding components can be produced from a variety of biomaterials, with collagen being just one option. The fact that collagen is from an animal is not really a contradiction — these proteins can be produced via recombinant technology in bacteria, yeast, or other mammalian cell lines. Nevertheless, more effort is being devoted to the development of more affordable polymers from plants, fungi, or other sources (e.g. chitosan, alginate) that can be functionalized via a variety of methods and are also edible or biodegradable such that they can be incorporated in a final product. A variety of these potential scaffold materials are already FDA-approved (pectin, glean gum, chitosan, gelatin, cellulose, alginate, etc). It is true that this could potentially modify the flavor or texture of a final product. I discuss this mostly in Series III.

Fourth, genetic stability is a factor for any cell line used in bioprocessing. Proper cell banking and quality control methods can be used to detect aberrant cell populations and re-start a culture if necessary. This is discussed in Series I.

The nutritional information is currently unknown or privately held, and it is an open question how the meat may match its animal-derived counterpart in terms of tenderness and flavor. These are fair points.

I’ll refrain from commenting on the environmental aspects as the field is too nascent to truly predict outcomes as of yet. New data should improve the estimates over time. I touch on these points in Series VI though. Also, it is highly likely that foodborne illness will be dramatically reduced as a small percentage of contamination events come from post-slaughter processing. Lastly, consumer acceptance studies have been somewhat variable, but the most comprehensive study to date suggests that consumers in China and India will be more likely to try the products and it’s important to realize this is a global undertaking (https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fsufs.2019.00011/full?utm_source=F-NTF&utm_medium=EMLX&utm_campaign=PRD_FEOPS_20170000_ARTICLE)

This piece paints a rosy picture of animal welfare. It is so far from the reality that I hardly know where to begin. Animals suffer through surgeries with no anesthetics or analgesics: tail docking, tooth nipping, dehorning, castration, branding, debeaking, the list goes on and on. Dairy production is inherently cruel because of the misery of the cow and calf when they are separated. Calves are put in isolation hutches where they cry for their mothers, often until they become hoarse. The roosters of egg-laying breeds are killed by crushing or suffocation. Spend 10 minutes searching the Internet for information about factory farming and you will see how ridiculous is the assertion that our modern agriculture system is not causing extreme and extensive animal suffering. Eat plants!
Also, the prediction from Mark Post is nearly four years old. In an article dated May 9, 2017, he said in Cook’s Illustrated that customers will be able to buy lab grown burgers for $10 a piece as soon as 2020.

Thanks for your message. No question animal welfare is important and most farmers and vets take it very seriously. But the article is about lab-grown meat.
In relation to Mark Post comments, you are right, thanks for the update. In any case $10 for a burger is not cheap, and looking at the uphill regulatory process to have this technology approved and the dependence on fetal bovine serum, 2020 looks pretty unrealistic to me.
In fact, some players announced the product to be available in 2018, but it didn’t happen: https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/01/health/clean-in-vitro-meat-food/index.html
Time will tell, but based on the information I shared in this article, I think it is not going to succeed, at least not in the near future.

You are not writing as a journalist. If you receive any monies from animal farming industry you should declare it. Whole animals develop from a single fertilized egg. If you want your science to be taken seriously, cite the publications. If you have any evidence that cultured cell meant has a significantly higher content of ‘cancer’ cell, please cite the evidence. Likewise, you flatly contradict the cultured meat proponents on the issue of antibiotics. Where is you evidence?

Thanks for your message. I appreciate you taking the time to read it and for bringing questions. A few comments:
– I don’t write as a journalist because I am not. My background is in vet sciences.
– All the statements made in the article are supported by the extensive bibliography that you can find at the end of the article.
– In relation to the potential risk (I mention the word potential also in the article), it is based on this paper (Hocquette, J-F; Is in vitro meat the solution for the future?. Meat Science 120 (2016) 167-176) that you can see in the bibliography.
– Cultured meat proponents mention antibiotic free meat as an advantage of cultured meat, but they don’t explain (at least I haven’t found any reference) how they plan to keep meat cultures free from bacteria, fungi and viruses. In normal lab practice, where cell cultures are much smaller, the use of antiseptics, includin antibiotics, is rutinary.
Kind regards

You should point out at the beginning of this article that this is mostly your biased opinion. Whilst you are choosing and referring to specific sources, your way of writing is clearly biased to save to current industry and put lab grown meat in disrespect.

Especially the part about animal welfare is poorly argumented. “It would mean the disappearance of billions of animals.” You are making this look like suddenly billions of animals would be killed, whilst it’s less animals which would be born. Luckily, because those billions would end up in people’s plate anyway, in many cases after having lived a miserable life.

Thanks for your comment. A few points:
– Beyond your interpretation of my opinion, all the data shared is supported by independent bibliography. If you find scientific articles I haven’t added as references, I would appreciate that you shared them. Several articles I studied are supportive of this technology, but most of them raise concerns about it. It is what it is beyond the opinions of those with a vested interest.
– When a new, better technology comes, it is not unlikely that the old one is phased out in a short time. This happened with the train and the horse carriages or when the iPhone took over the Blackberry. So if lab grown meat happened to be that benefitial it might mean the quick dissapearance of farm animals. Probably not likely, but not impossible.
– All technologies improve price when implemented. But people who work in this field say that they can get to $10/burger. This is not cheap by any means when a pound of beef costs $3. But beyond that, traditional farming keeps also improving costs every day.
I appreciate you taking the time to read this piece.
Best

enjoyed the article, can I ask, does Invitro meat, leave a biohazardous material behind like a fluid?

Does this fluid/whatever have to be disposed of or does it have to filtered like waste water? I would imagine that it could not just be dumped and would have to be treated to prevent contamination with ground water and that it is cellular bio waste?

I know Pharma companies have this issue and spend a lot of money disposing of waste, does this apply to Invitro meat?

Thanks for reading the post and for your question. Cells will eliminate waste: mostly urea and lactic acid and this will have to be constantly removed. This “soup” may be used as fertilizer although its quality could be lower than that of manure. I assume it would have to have the same treatments as waters from farms.
Definitely, the issues pharma companies face would be shared by this technology.

Thank you for your thoughtful article. I think it is well written and has good backing. I am hoping that one day we can get beyond the point where when someone has a different opinion that us, we assume they are biased and not scientific. New technologies often have a rosy outlook until all the impacts and issues surface and then they may not look so good. There are many examples of this.

One point I think that is often missed among the folks who think plant based is the only way for animals not to suffer, is that many animals die in the process of harvesting and planting plants. We don’t see it and we don’t hear much about it but it is very real. Rabbits, voles, mice, and many more are killed in the process. Anyone who has run farm equipment can attest to this. I think this is part of the debate that needs to be brought to the forefront sooner rather than later. If you are not foraging, animals and countless creatures, small animals, beetles, grasshoppers, etc. are being killed to feed us as humans. We need to be honest about it and take responsibility for how things really are, not how we want them to be.

Thanks for taking the time to read this article. The point you make is very interesting. I haven’t been able to find much about it, but definitely harvesting crops has an impact on many animals. It could be argued that a lot is cultured to feed animals, so if we all only ate vegetables, we could save the part that is used to feed livestock and have to use less land. This is quite doubtful as 86% of what animals eat is not edible by people and in fact livestock mostly eat by-products of that which is harvested for people:https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211912416300013

Very through article Juan. Lots of sound information with the research to back it. Everyone just jumps for joy when they here the end of animal suffering but it must be logistical first. To me it doesn’t sound safe nor does it sound like its benefiting the environment much. Just every vegans dream is what it is. Media will say its the best thing since sliced bread. Anyways.

I followed the 1st commenter Lori Amos’s “scout22” link and found that her business is contingent on vegan marketing. By her comment’s very own logic therefore, info she presents in favor of veganism would have to be taken “with a grain of salt.”

Doing so might be unfair to her vegan patrons, which shows how unfair her point (and similar ones by other commenters) was to you, Mr. Pasqual.

I must say your reasoning is reassuring to those of us involved in animal agriculture.

The lab-cultured protoplasm wrongly being termed “meat” looks so unappetizing it’s a wonder anyone would want to eat it.

The snarky attempts to trash your brilliant outline of today’s state of ersatz animal protein production were truly entertaining. Thanks for posting them and for your kind and very gentlemanly responses to them.

Facts cited by Richard Hobson (Jan. 22, 2019) and Gerald Guidroz (Jan. 23, 2019) are very important considerations, practically always glossed over in activists’ zeal to restrict or replace animal products as foods for humans.

Mr. Hobson: I too, have observed the hardships of disposal of animal-tissue farm wastes, including diseased and lightning-struck carcasses. These are more and more being composted rather than rendered, buried, incinerated or applied direct to land.

Mr. Guidroz: I’ve noted the wholesale death of animals plowed up during vegetable farm preparation and cultivation. I’ve found birds, small mammals and reptiles too, that went through harvesting equipment. It causes harvested goods to be rejected for human use (if not fed to livestock, it’d be wasted). I applaud your having brought up this always-hushed factor of cost-effective vegetable production.

Please contact me Mr. Pasqual, if you will, for potential publication of your findings to thoughtful print audiences in some of our magazines and newspapers.

A brief summary of some points of clarification are below:
First, the use of FBS is a non-starter. It is too expensive, too variable lot-to-lot, and there is not enough FBS in the world to supply the cell therapy industry, let alone the larger volumes needed to make cell-based meat at scale. A host of serum-free medium formulations already exist for the growth of a variety of stem cells and will continue to be optimized for clean meat production. The essential growth factors necessary can be replaced with recombinant technology, although work has to be done to make this more affordable. Virtually every company in this space has stated they will not sell products using FBS, and many have already switched to serum-free formulations. It is true that cost-effective, optimal formulations for a broad set of species and cell types will take some time to develop. I cover this in Series IV of my cell-based meat series.

Second, there will be no antibiotics used at scale. Academic cell culture labs often use antibiotics or antimycotics because the cells exist in an incubator that is opened throughout the day, with cells moving back and forth in the open air. An industrialized bioprocess is largely sealed from the outside world and methods were created to keep these bioprocesses sterile (irradiation, electroporation, steam, filtration). The tools and strategies used to keep the production of biologics such as vaccines and antibodies sterile will be applied to cell-based meat production at scale. This is a huge benefit for cell-based meat production — it should not contribute to antibiotic use and subsequent antibiotic resistance and should decrease foodborne illness events. I discuss this in Series II, IV, and VI.

Third, scaffolding components can be produced from a variety of biomaterials, with collagen being just one option. The fact that collagen is from an animal is not really a contradiction — these proteins can be produced via recombinant technology in bacteria, yeast, or other mammalian cell lines. Nevertheless, more effort is being devoted to the development of more affordable polymers from plants, fungi, or other sources (e.g. chitosan, alginate) that can be functionalized via a variety of methods and are also edible or biodegradable such that they can be incorporated in a final product. A variety of these potential scaffold materials are already FDA-approved (pectin, glean gum, chitosan, gelatin, cellulose, alginate, etc). It is true that this could potentially modify the flavor or texture of a final product. I discuss this mostly in Series III.

Fourth, genetic stability is a factor for any cell line used in bioprocessing. Proper cell banking and quality control methods can be used to detect aberrant cell populations and re-start a culture if necessary. This is discussed in Series I.
The nutritional information is currently unknown or privately held, and it is an open question how the meat may match its animal-derived counterpart in terms of tenderness and flavor. These are fair points.

I’ll refrain from commenting on the environmental aspects as the field is too nascent to truly predict outcomes as of yet. New data should improve the estimates over time. I touch on these points in Series VI though. Also, it is highly likely that foodborne illness will be dramatically reduced as a small percentage of contamination events come from post-slaughter processing. Lastly, consumer acceptance studies have been somewhat variable, but the most comprehensive study to date suggests that consumers in China and India will be more likely to try the products and it’s important to realize this is a global undertaking (https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fsufs.2019.00011/full?utm_source=F-NTF&utm_medium=EMLX&utm_campaign=PRD_FEOPS_20170000_ARTICLE)

Mr. Swartz,
first of all, thanks for your reply, I do appreciate. It seems that you have a deep understanding of this technology and I will carefully read the materials you share.
A few considerations:
– FBS is still used, and the managers and scientists working in this technology do acknowledge this as a limiting factor. They say that they are trying to eliminate it, without success so far. I am aware there are alternatives, but they may be too costly or not yielding the right amounts. This is what they say:https://www.wired.co.uk/article/scaling-clean-meat-serum-just-finless-foods-mosa-meat
– If no antibiotics/antimicotics are used, the risk of contamination does exist. I am familiar with other fermentation processes and keep undesired microorganisms at bay is costly and not always successful. It is however perceived as a great advantage, maybe not so much as the use of antibiotics in animal production is decreasing significantly (especially in the EU and the US where data is available)
– Scaffolding: if vegetal/fungal substrat is used, this could put at risk the definition of meat itself for this product. If recombinant sourced colagen is used, well GMOs, although safe, are not very popular and this techology is not approved in many countries. Not an easy hurdle to overcome.
– Environment: Yes, too early to know, but we have to rely on the existing studies and these are not very optimistic for lab grown meat. Besides, traditional farming is getting more and more efficient too, so lab grown meat is competing against a moving target, not a fixed one.
– Food borne illness: There are more FB related to vegetables than to animal products, so it is clear that processing plays a very significant role in the development of these pathologies. Harvesting a tank full of muscular cells and transporting it would be a really risky process from that perspective. I understand we would eliminate the risk of fecal exposure, but this is targeted today, pretty efficiently (salmonella outbreaks in the EU are very low). Animals can be transported alive till where the meat will be consumed, but what would be the lead time from a fermentation tank to market. I think this point has many unknowns as to claim an advantage for lab grown meat.

Thanks a lot for the information and the comments. Any new piece would be really welcome.